Negroponte: Laptop for Every Kid

Kevin Poulsen
11.17.05

Nicholas Negroponte, right, and Mary Lou Jepsen present the $100 Laptop prototype at the World Summit on the Information Society north of Tunis, Tunisia, on Nov. 16, 2005.

TUNIS, Tunisia -- If tech luminary Nicholas Negroponte has his way, the pale light from rugged, hand-cranked $100 laptops will illuminate homes in villages and townships throughout the developing world, and give every child on the planet a computer of their own by 2010.

The MIT Media Lab and Wired magazine founder stood shoulder to shoulder with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to unveil the first working prototype of the "$100 laptop" -- currently more like $110 -- at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society here Wednesday. The Linux-based machine instantly became the hit of the show, and Thursday saw diplomats and dignitaries, reporters and TV cameras perpetually crowded around the booth of One Laptop Per Child -- Negroponte's nonprofit -- craning for a glimpse of the toy-like tote.

With its cheery green coloring and Tonka-tough shell, the laptop certainly looks cool. It boasts a 7-inch screen that swivels like a tablet PC, and an electricity-generating crank that provides 40 minutes of power from a minute of grinding. Built-in Wi-Fi with mesh networking support, combined with a microphone, speaker and headset jack, even means the box can serve as a node in an ersatz VOIP phone system.

Under the hood, it's powered by a modest 500-MHz AMD processor, and uses a gig of flash memory for storage. But the key to building it cheaply enough to educate the world's children is an innovative, low-power LCD screen technology invented by Negroponte's CTO, Mary Lou Jepsen. "The manufacturers are the toughest audience, and they stopped laughing in September," says Jepsen. The machine is expected to start mass production late next year, and the governments of Thailand and Brazil have already said they're serious about placing $1 million orders for their school kids. Others are close to lining up.

Wired News broke through a cloud of admirers to chat with Negroponte about the future of the little green box that's captured the imagination of normally staid world leaders.

WN: Did you expect this kind of reaction?

Negroponte: I expected this reaction, actually. Partly because this kind of meeting is normally not that interesting. And I don't mean that quite as pejoratively as it sounds. You've got a lot of public figures making short statements, you've got a lot of booths which are NGOs, which are passing out pamphlets. I went to the Geneva one (in 2003), and being a star here is not something you should take too seriously.

WN: What do you think the appeal of this idea is?

Negroponte: The appeal is obviously the cost, and the people realize that you can do one laptop per child. When it sinks in, they realize that you would not propose one pencil per classroom. It really does fall into a different class.

Clearly (though) in some countries even $100 spread over five years is too expensive. So in those countries we have to find other means to pay for it than the normal education budget. But at least half of the developing world -- certainly half the population, probably half the countries -- could afford the $20 per year.

WN: How did you come to do this project in the first place?

Negroponte: We've been working now with computers and education for 30 years, computers in developing countries for 20 years, and trying to make low-cost machines for 10 years. This is not a sudden turn down the road. What put us over the edge was that it was possible to do it. A combination of things that had been invented -- display technology like electronic ink, mesh networks for communications, just a number of things that happened in the context of the Media Lab -- (indicated) that the time was right.

Also telecommunications in developing countries is moving apace and things are happening -- so it doesn't really need us anymore, that's going to happen. So focusing on the device and one laptop per child was kind of the natural thing to do.